4 ms·

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership

124 points by 1337biz 13y ago

andrewfong 13y ago
I wonder if this is the flip side of "information wants to be free". Nearly all use of modern software generates sensitive information, and if that information is online, it will be made available to others, including the government, eventually.
- gnosis 13y ago
  "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine – too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better." -- Stewart Brand [1] - spoken at the first Hackers' Conference, and reprinted in the May 1985 Whole Earth Review. The quotation is an elaboration from his book, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, published in 1987. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand#Aphorisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand#Aphorisms
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Seems reasonable to believe. It's also just hard to contain entropy. Information about you tends to leak out any time you are observed. As observations become more durable, they support stronger inferences. Personally I'm not that worried about it. Just because police societies have tended to be high on collecting data about citizens does not mean that collecting data about citizens causes a police society. In fact, the opposite is most likely true.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- lbarrow 13y ago
  The military-industrial complex is a different idea that refers to a separate set of problems.
- BrandonMarc 13y ago
  I'm more fearful of the government-media complex. NBC doctors a 911 tape, and sways a nation. Hmm. Does Facebook / Google count as a "media" company, if you define it loosely enough?
wavefunction 13y ago
some would call this fascism some would, some woodn't
hannibal5 13y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
- wavefunction 13y ago
  yo we got egoistists confusing their selves with their employers an it's just up the alley of all weak willed creatures who crave illusion over substance...
azakai 13y ago
> We have no choice but to share our personal information with these corporations, because that’s how our world works today. While (as usual) the article makes some strong points, it ends on this, which is not convincing. We can certainly control the amount of information we share with these corporations. Cold turkey is indeed very hard, but using their data-collecting services less, diversifying by not using multiple services of a single company, or switching at least partially to a competing product that collects less data - are all certainly possible. Saying we are powerless and must use these services, and therefore we have to lobby government to legislate a fix, is like saying that trans fats are super-dangerous but so tasty that we have no choice but to eat them, so we need government to ban them. We should both take responsibility and eat less trans fats, and also try to limit their use through government regulation.
- munin 13y ago
  no, it isn't. everything is a data collecting service. want to not share this information? then don't do the following: - use a credit card - use a cell phone - use toll roads - buy utilities - buy plane tickets - use a rewards card at a grocery|electronics|drug store - use an ATM - visit a doctors office - walk down a street, or into a conveience store, or into a shopping mall, where a CCTV camera can see you - rent property - own property - rent a car - have a "regular" job - buy gas (for the car that you can't own or rent, natch) don't do the above, and proooobbly a lot of your data won't wind up in some database. do just a few of those things, and you probably have no privacy. do all (and more) of them, and probably "big data" will know when you are going to have relationship trouble before you do
  - BrandonMarc 13y ago
    Sadly, you can add to that list: - drive on a road near a police car, a bridge, or many buildings ... since all of the above, often have license-plate scanners attached, compiling a comprehensive history of individual driving patterns.
    - zobzu 13y ago
jonaford 13y ago
I was disappointed after having seen the title. I was hoping for a discussion on information asymmetry and a call to arms from the public to balance the scales via a publicly controlled mass surveillance system.
- skybrian 13y ago
  In that case you should be reading David Brin.
yourcelf 13y ago
Moxie Marlinspike gave a fantastic talk on this subject in 2010, even down to the government mandated tracking device vs mobile phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk
autodidakto 13y ago
"Cells phones are tracking devices" used to be how cliche, wild-eyed conspiracy theorists were identified. Glad to see the mainstream (bloomberg and others in general, not Schneier) catching up.
PaperclipTaken 13y ago
This paper offers little with regards to future steps to protect your data, and basically accepts that we must give all of our information to corporations, and protect ourselves by improving our government. But future technological advancements can help us escape giving our data to corporations. Imagine using a bittorrent style service to back up your (encrypted) files instead of drop box. Imagine using freenet to back up your files. Imagine using bitcoin to replace credit cards. Imagine using a mesh-network to avoid centralized ISPs. A lot of these technologies aren't practical yet, but are moving forward. Changing the govenrment will be a long, slow, painful process. While we are waiting on the bureaucracy, we can work to advance decentralized technologies that will help put privacy back in our own hands.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  What? Bittorrent tracks every IP address you interact with. An FBI-planted "seeder" or even FBI-controlled "peer" can prove which IP addresses are downloading or uploading illegal material. Every transaction in BTC is _forever_ recorded into the public ledger. Every, single one. BTC is a goldmine for information, and is hardly private at all. Pseudo-anonymous is as close as you're gonna get, and after one transaction, your BTC wallet will forever be associated with a particular purchase. The mesh-network is the closest idea you've got... but at the end of the day, the ISP is the weakest link. You're connecting to the internet somehow, and that means trusting Verizon, Comcast, or whoever to keep up with Network Neutrality. If Verizon / Comcast bans (or degrades the performance of) Tor nodes, and if ISPs hellban Tor nodes, then the system dies easily. The first step to creating progress is to understand the current limitations of systems, and understand why they would or wouldn't work. ------------ Also, COINTELPRO and Project SHAMROCK. Public/private partnership has existed for an extremely long period of time. The political solution IMO is the most logical one, as it stopped Project SHAMROCK before, as well as Nixon's abuses of the government intelligence system. What was the FISA court created for, and is it effective at it's job? What has changed since the 1970s implementation of the FISA court? What are the citizen's responsibilities of the FISA system? A key is fully understanding politics and US history, which the typical American is unfortunately extremely ignorant about. If you don't like the current situation, then learn a little history, learn a little politics, and do something about it. EDIT: The answer btw, is to be aware of the "watchdog" systems that have been built into our democracy. The watchdogs are the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. As I've stated in my previous posts, the members on these Committees are charged with creating and drafting laws, and have full Top Secret clearances... and the ability to investigate any intelligence agency they so please. These committees were created in response to previous abuses (ie: see the projects I listed above), and are staffed by bipartisan groups. Why were Senators like Wyden and Udall ignored when they were extremely vocal of these programs before? Were Americans just ignorant on these issues? Did people not care? Do people not realize the importance of listening to Senators / Representatives?

124 points by 1337biz 13y ago

I wonder if this is the flip side of "information wants to be free". Nearly all use of modern software generates sensitive information, and if that information is online, it will be made available to others, including the government, eventually.

gnosis 13y ago
"Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine – too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better." -- Stewart Brand [1] - spoken at the first Hackers' Conference, and reprinted in the May 1985 Whole Earth Review. The quotation is an elaboration from his book, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, published in 1987. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand#Aphorisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand#Aphorisms
jamesaguilar 13y ago
Seems reasonable to believe. It's also just hard to contain entropy. Information about you tends to leak out any time you are observed. As observations become more durable, they support stronger inferences. Personally I'm not that worried about it. Just because police societies have tended to be high on collecting data about citizens does not mean that collecting data about citizens causes a police society. In fact, the opposite is most likely true.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lbarrow 13y ago
The military-industrial complex is a different idea that refers to a separate set of problems.
BrandonMarc 13y ago
I'm more fearful of the government-media complex. NBC doctors a 911 tape, and sways a nation. Hmm. Does Facebook / Google count as a "media" company, if you define it loosely enough?

wavefunction 13y ago

some would call this fascism some would, some woodn't

hannibal5 13y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

wavefunction 13y ago
yo we got egoistists confusing their selves with their employers an it's just up the alley of all weak willed creatures who crave illusion over substance...

azakai 13y ago

> We have no choice but to share our personal information with these corporations, because that’s how our world works today. While (as usual) the article makes some strong points, it ends on this, which is not convincing. We can certainly control the amount of information we share with these corporations. Cold turkey is indeed very hard, but using their data-collecting services less, diversifying by not using multiple services of a single company, or switching at least partially to a competing product that collects less data - are all certainly possible. Saying we are powerless and must use these services, and therefore we have to lobby government to legislate a fix, is like saying that trans fats are super-dangerous but so tasty that we have no choice but to eat them, so we need government to ban them. We should both take responsibility and eat less trans fats, and also try to limit their use through government regulation.

munin 13y ago
no, it isn't. everything is a data collecting service. want to not share this information? then don't do the following: - use a credit card - use a cell phone - use toll roads - buy utilities - buy plane tickets - use a rewards card at a grocery|electronics|drug store - use an ATM - visit a doctors office - walk down a street, or into a conveience store, or into a shopping mall, where a CCTV camera can see you - rent property - own property - rent a car - have a "regular" job - buy gas (for the car that you can't own or rent, natch) don't do the above, and proooobbly a lot of your data won't wind up in some database. do just a few of those things, and you probably have no privacy. do all (and more) of them, and probably "big data" will know when you are going to have relationship trouble before you do
- BrandonMarc 13y ago
  Sadly, you can add to that list: - drive on a road near a police car, a bridge, or many buildings ... since all of the above, often have license-plate scanners attached, compiling a comprehensive history of individual driving patterns.
  - zobzu 13y ago

jonaford 13y ago

I was disappointed after having seen the title. I was hoping for a discussion on information asymmetry and a call to arms from the public to balance the scales via a publicly controlled mass surveillance system.

skybrian 13y ago
In that case you should be reading David Brin.

yourcelf 13y ago

Moxie Marlinspike gave a fantastic talk on this subject in 2010, even down to the government mandated tracking device vs mobile phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk

autodidakto 13y ago

"Cells phones are tracking devices" used to be how cliche, wild-eyed conspiracy theorists were identified. Glad to see the mainstream (bloomberg and others in general, not Schneier) catching up.

PaperclipTaken 13y ago

This paper offers little with regards to future steps to protect your data, and basically accepts that we must give all of our information to corporations, and protect ourselves by improving our government. But future technological advancements can help us escape giving our data to corporations. Imagine using a bittorrent style service to back up your (encrypted) files instead of drop box. Imagine using freenet to back up your files. Imagine using bitcoin to replace credit cards. Imagine using a mesh-network to avoid centralized ISPs. A lot of these technologies aren't practical yet, but are moving forward. Changing the govenrment will be a long, slow, painful process. While we are waiting on the bureaucracy, we can work to advance decentralized technologies that will help put privacy back in our own hands.

dragontamer 13y ago
What? Bittorrent tracks every IP address you interact with. An FBI-planted "seeder" or even FBI-controlled "peer" can prove which IP addresses are downloading or uploading illegal material. Every transaction in BTC is _forever_ recorded into the public ledger. Every, single one. BTC is a goldmine for information, and is hardly private at all. Pseudo-anonymous is as close as you're gonna get, and after one transaction, your BTC wallet will forever be associated with a particular purchase. The mesh-network is the closest idea you've got... but at the end of the day, the ISP is the weakest link. You're connecting to the internet somehow, and that means trusting Verizon, Comcast, or whoever to keep up with Network Neutrality. If Verizon / Comcast bans (or degrades the performance of) Tor nodes, and if ISPs hellban Tor nodes, then the system dies easily. The first step to creating progress is to understand the current limitations of systems, and understand why they would or wouldn't work. ------------ Also, COINTELPRO and Project SHAMROCK. Public/private partnership has existed for an extremely long period of time. The political solution IMO is the most logical one, as it stopped Project SHAMROCK before, as well as Nixon's abuses of the government intelligence system. What was the FISA court created for, and is it effective at it's job? What has changed since the 1970s implementation of the FISA court? What are the citizen's responsibilities of the FISA system? A key is fully understanding politics and US history, which the typical American is unfortunately extremely ignorant about. If you don't like the current situation, then learn a little history, learn a little politics, and do something about it. EDIT: The answer btw, is to be aware of the "watchdog" systems that have been built into our democracy. The watchdogs are the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. As I've stated in my previous posts, the members on these Committees are charged with creating and drafting laws, and have full Top Secret clearances... and the ability to investigate any intelligence agency they so please. These committees were created in response to previous abuses (ie: see the projects I listed above), and are staffed by bipartisan groups. Why were Senators like Wyden and Udall ignored when they were extremely vocal of these programs before? Were Americans just ignorant on these issues? Did people not care? Do people not realize the importance of listening to Senators / Representatives?